Articles

From Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo)
19-25 July 2001 [Issue No. 543]

Dream Deferred

Gamal Nkrumah

Traditionally, there has been a pecking order at African summits -- the solitary stars who make the headlines and the rest who all too readily allow themselves to be upstaged. There are always the strongmen and their henchmen, the dissenters and their defenders. Since its inception in 1963, the vast majority of the leaders of member states of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) stubbornly avoided risking tampering with their hard-earned national sovereignty and strongly resisted making any changes to the post-colonial status quo.

The polarisation of alternatives resonates through almost four decades of bitter argument over African unity. We live in cynical times. Idealism is ridiculed, and ideology rendered irrelevant. Money matters as never before. And moral courage is a fruitless digression which leads away from the straight and narrow path of money-making ventures. In more ways than one, the current crop of African leaders have flagrantly profaned the long upheld principles of the OAU's founding fathers. So why pay lip service to African Union?

With monotonous regularity, those who urged a tighter political and economic unity were publicly applauded, privately admonished and with ruthless behind the scenes diplomatic manIuvering, effectively sidelined. It began with Ghana's first president Kwame Nkrumah who fought for and lost the battle to institute his United States of Africa. His peers viewed his motives suspiciously and opted for the gradualist approach to African unity.

The most ubiquitiously cited intellectual inspiration for advocates of a fast-track African unity, Nkrumah offered probably the least romance- bound, most factually grounded view of African unity yet proposed. "Three alternatives are open to African states," Nkrumah extrapolated. "First, to unite and to save our continent; secondly, to continue in disunity and to disintegrate; or thirdly, to sell out and capitulate before the forces of imperialism and neo-colonialism. As each year passes, our failure to unite strengthens our enemies and delays the fulfilment of the aspirations of our people."

Nkrumah's ideas were radically different from those advocated, and sometimes foisted on him, by successive generations of Pan-Africanists. Nkrumah was opposed to sub-regional groupings that proliferate in Africa today such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Community of Eastern and Southern African States (COMESA), the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the Arab Maghreb Union of North Africa. "Economic and regional organisations which have from time to time been formed in Africa have achieved very little in terms of improving the standard of living of the African masses," he stressed. In spite of "the great number of high-sounding resolutions and declarations of intent agreed by the various regional, economic groupings, economic and political conditions of Africa have shown scant improvement," he said. "Full economic and social development can only be accomplished within the optimum zone of development, which is the entire African continent, and under the direction of an All-African Union Government pursuing policies of scientific socialism," he explained. Many of his peers saw red.

THE CONTINENT'S COMEUPPANCE:

The OAU was conceived as the midwife that will deliver a united Africa, instead the organisation itself turned out to be still born. Nkrumah was sorely disappointed and was highly critical of the charter of the continental organisation he helped found. "It was a charter of intent, rather than a charter of positive action. But this was inevitable in view of the widely differing policies of those who took part in the [1963 Addis Ababa] conference. All were agreed on the principles of African liberation and unification, and the need for close cooperation in economic, social and cultural spheres, but there were crucial differences of opinion when it came to questions of methods and procedures," Nkrumah complained. These very same paralysing "crucial differences" persist to this day, and the gap remains to be bridged between the majority gradualists and the minority radicals urging immediate continental unity.

Moreover, Nkrumah spelt out the essential shortcoming of the OAU. "The lack of provision for an All-African High Command to give teeth to the organisation, meant that the OAU suffered from the start from inherent weaknesses. There was much talk of the inviolability of [national] sovereignty," Nkrumah lamented. "[M]ost of our national frontiers are relics of colonialism, and irrelevant within the context of the African nation." Unsurprisingly, therefore, "in times of crisis [the OAU] has failed to provide the dynamic leadership and decisive action expected of it."

GADDAFI CENTRE-STAGE:

More recently, and especially in the past five years, the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has personally taken up Nkrumah's mantra. On the surface, there is today, as yesterday, an explicit and unanimous agreement among Africa's leaders that they must embrace change, but precious few take it upon themselves to initiate the radical changes. Maybe this is now beyond much of Africa. If so, history would judge Lusaka harshly, pronouncing the 37th OAU summit, convened last week in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, as a relatively insignificant occurrence, yet another unavailing talking shop.

The traditional tensions between radicals and so- called moderates resurfaced with a vengeance in Lusaka. The contradictions were glaringly obvious at the Mulungushi International Conference Centre in the heart of the Zambian capital where the 37th OAU summit meeting took place. Still, important meetings were arranged on the sidelines of the Lusaka 2001 summit. Congolese President Joseph Kabila and his Rwandan counterpart Paul Kagame clinched an agreement at a mini summit in Lusaka at the prompting of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan who happily presided over the meeting between the two protagonists.

Regardless, of their differences, most African leaders of different ideological persuasions religiously make a point of attending the OAU summits. Some of the continent's leaders attend with the express aim of settling old scores, others to clinch business deals, and the silent majority simply want to be seen and not heard. The few loud ones capture the accolades, but are not necessarily listened to. One such flamboyant character is the Libya's Gaddafi who persistently steals the show. Unwaveringly, he pushes for closer African continental economic and political integration. He did so in the Togolese capital Lome in July 2000. In Lusaka, last week, he seized the moment to reiterate his call for a fast-track African Union (AU).

The AU charter aims at creating a relatively more powerful executive council for the continent than the OAU. It also provides for a continental parliament, a central bank, court of justice and a single currency and passport. The problem with the AU is, that unlike the European Union (EU) after which the AU was vaguely modelled, no standards have been set as far as the bread and butter issues of employment and unemployment, inflation and monetary standards are concerned.

Indeed, Gaddafi warned that the lack of popular participation in the decision-making process of the OAU in the past was one of the major shortcomings of the old Pan-African body. The AU must not be a presidents' club, he said. He also lambasted EU plans to "compromise the territorial integrity of Africa" by driving a wedge between Africa north and south of the Sahara, and incorporating North Africa and the Middle East into a subservient partnership with Europe in the so- called Barcelona, or Euro-Mediterranean project.

WHY LUSAKA?:

To begin with, there was much consternation about the choice of the Zambian capital as the venue where the OAU metamorphoses into the AU. At first many African heads of state, including Gaddafi, objected to the choice of the beautiful garden city of Lusaka, perhaps not the most imposing or bustling of African capitals, as the venue of the 37th OAU summit. They later relented, and Lusaka, with its leafy suburbs, brilliant sunshine and refreshingly cool climate, Lusaka -- somewhat sleepy under normal circumstances -- turned out to be the perfect setting for the last OAU summit, where tempers occasionally flared.

But Lusaka is not merely a pretty backdrop. The city is replete with Pan-African historical significance as well. For decades, Lusaka has housed the headquarters of the main southern African liberation movements. South Africa's African National Congress (ANC) and Namibia's South- West African People's Organisation (SWAPO) made their home-base in Lusaka. The city was agog with freedom fighters from across the southern part of the continent. An entire generation of guerrilla fighters were raised in the Zambian capital and the in training camps on its outskirts. National liberation from colonialism, European settler colonialism and apartheid was the most significant legacy of the OAU.

Today, the priorities are very different. Africa is free of colonialism, even though the continent has yet to cut loose from the tentacles of neo-colonialism, a phrase coined by Nkrumah to describe the subservient relationship between nominally independent African states and their former European colonial masters who control their rickety economies.

FINANCIAL HEADACHES:

With no less than 15 OAU member states unable to pay financial assessments for two consecutive financial years, the organisation is in dire straits. Over $46.6 million in unpaid dues is owed to the OAU by member states. For some two dozen African countries these massive arrear payments are crippling.

The burning question is who will fund the ambitious agenda of the AU. The biggest contributors are inevitably the ones who call the shots and set the agenda. Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt and Libya are by far the OAU's largest contributors. Algeria and Tunisia come next. Small wonder then, that Arab-African cooperation tops the agenda these days. The strange irony is that Arab largesse virtually keeps the African organisation afloat.

Mercifully, there was no sign of recipients grovelling before their benefactors. The OAU is currently soliciting funds to facilitate the transition to the AU. The private sector is called upon to contribute. But, the private sector in much of Africa both north and south of the Sahara are apathetic to the concept of AU. The OAU teeters on the verge of financial bankruptcy. There is no sign that the AU will fare any better.

The new Pan-African outfit will inevitably be looking for backers with deep pockets. A severe shortage of funds has sadly crippled the older organisation's effectiveness. The paralysing impoverishment of a host of nations south of the Sahara, the proliferation of wars and in several instances the actual disintegration of states has meant that the failure of the OAU to adopt a fast- track to political and economic AU has been so depressingly dismal that pointing the accusing finger at single member state or head of state would be a futile exercise.

Sub-Saharan African countries are generally extremely grateful in public for Libyan generosity. In private, however, they complain bitterly about the capricious nature of Libyan magnanimity. Gaddafi, the main instigator behind the high-sounding resolutions of the Lome summit last year and again in Lusaka this year, unabashedly makes no bones about his conditional handouts. It is an open secret that he footed the bills of several African delegations in both Lome and Lusaka. Zambia, like Togo, would have been incapable of organising a successful OAU summit without Libyan financial backing. Preparations for both the Lome and Lusaka summits proceeded smoothly simply because Libya took care of the bills. Half a dozen small and impoverished African states permitted themselves to be persuaded to vote in favour of Gaddafi's fast-track agenda precisely because they were paid by the Libyans to do so. Libyan officials were conspicuously present at cash-desks in Lusaka's hotels and curio shops frequented by several African delegates.

LIBYAN LARGESSE:

Libyan largesse was a key factor in speeding up the process of ratifying the AU. Only the isolationist Indian-Ocean island of Madagascar, whose cultural identity and racial composition is as much Asian as African, and oil- rich Equatorial Guinea which can do without Libyan petro-dollars have not ratified the African Union treaty. The Libyan leader obviously has no qualms about such arm twisting tactics.

Still, it would be incorrect to infer that Gaddafi calls all the shots. Gaddafi wanted his friend Louis Farrakhan, the African American leader of the Nation of Islam to take the podium, but the Libyan leader's special request was flatly turned down by his host the Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, a devout Christian who officially designated Zambia the first Christian nation in Africa.

Lusaka is a relaxed city. Too security lax for the liking and comfort of some of the delegates. Presidents, ministers, diplomats and other dignitaries rubbed shoulders with businessmen and tourists at the sumptuous breakfast buffet provided at the five star hotel and featuring the full range of traditional English breakfast favourites, a legacy of British colonialism in Central Africa.

ZAMBIAN CHARMS:

Zambia charmed its visitors in many other ways. Not least was the friendly and good-natured ambiance of the Zambian people. Presidential chauffeur Lizzy Machina made her mark at the 37th OAU summit. Machina almost stole the limelight from Gaddafi. She was the first female presidential driver to make the headlines in the OAU's history. Assigned to drive Sierra Leonean President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah around Lusaka, she was often mistaken for one of Gaddafi's legendary 500 all female presidential guards.

Zambia's first president, today a gingerly octogenarian, won the hearts of the visiting African delegates with his wit and humour. Never missing a chance to badmouth Zambian President Chiluba, he darted from one delegate to another waving his trade-mark white handkerchief, patting the heads of adulating youngsters as if he where the Pope. Praising the Almighty, Kaunda never tired of describing in vivid detail his trials and tribulations and not least the hair-raising manner in which he escaped an assassination attempt ostensibly orchestrated by Chiluba's henchmen a couple of years ago.

Security in Lusaka was alarmingly lax considering the brouhaha concerning the recent brutal murder in mysterious circumstances of Paul Tembo, a leading Zambian opposition figure and deputy national secretary of the former Zambian ruling party, the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD).

I walked right into the media centre and collected the speeches without first obtaining my accreditation papers. No one stopped me or even raised an eyebrow. This would have been unthinkable in Cairo or most other cities hosting such an important summit. The Inter- Continental, where most of the visiting heads of state and delegates stayed was surprisingly free of security checks. Thankfully, for the duration of the three-day summit, there was not a single violent incident that warranted police intervention.

The bizarre exception, which was eventually put down to a regular power cut, involved the maverick Libyan leader. The timing of the scare was exquisite. As Gaddafi took the podium on the second day of the summit, the lights suddenly went out. All hell broke loose as the trembling delegates waited on tenterhooks. A beaming Gaddafi emerged as the power was restored, clenching his fist in a black power salute, and surrounded by his all female guards, to the great relief of everyone.

For better or for worse, the AU has now replaced the OAU.

The Lome treaty setting up the AU has been in force since 26 May 2001. However, none of the institutions envisioned have materialised. There is still a long way to go before a credible African parliament is convened, a single African currency circulated, an African passport issued and an African army created. The continent is obliged to speed up the implementation of the Abuja Treaty of 1991 that stipulated the establishment of an African Economic Community by 2025. At best the AU promises to pick up the pieces from a tired OAU. But the effectiveness of the new Pan-African organisation hinges on the political will of the continent's leaders, African public opinion and the masses at large. At worst, the AU is a harbinger of a feeble future for a conflict-ridden continent.

http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/2001/543/sc1.htm

Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo)
19-25 July 2001 [Issue No. 543]

Gye Nyame
Karen C. Aboiralor,
Deputy President Association of Africans and African-Americans
Forward Ever; Backward Never! Karen-Yaa